Canon Cinema

Everyone seems to be in love the new HD shooting Canon SLRs (5D, 7D and Rebel 2ti). I have a 7D myself, and it's the coolest toy I've had in ages.

But depending on the "mission" it's not always really the best choice of video camera. Other times, the cameras unique strengths make it and ideal choice. Here are some of the cameras strengths

1. Small and lightweight
2. Incredible choice of lenses
3. Excellent stills shooting capability

It also has some major shortcomings:

1. Aliasing due to binning or skipping photosites on read-out of the sensor
2. Rolling shutter
3. Highly compressed h.264, 4:2:0 sub-sampled video
4. Poor ergonomics for video shooting
5. Poor on-board sound, which essentially necessitates dual system operation for anything requiring decent sound.

Each shortcoming is minor in itself, but they do add up. Third party vendors like Zacuto and Redrock Micro sell accessories to address some of the ergonomic short comings of camera. Of course, once you pimp the camera out with all the accessories, it's no longer small and light. And the technical issues are still a problem. The accessories do nothing to solve the the aliasing or rolling shutter.


Still, the success of these cameras have gotten Canons attention and now Canon seem to be listening to the concerns of video shooters. Thier recent addition of 23.98fps as a feature on the 5D is evidence of that. If Canon were smart, they would really go after this market because they could OWN it in two years with just a few careful moves:

1. Make a large sensor video/cinema camera similar to the Red Scarlet that takes Canon EOS lenses
2. Improve the ergonomics of the Canon EOS lenses to make them more "cinema like" . This could easily be achieved with the current line of lenses with clever electronic control of the mechanism. Third parties are already doing it on the Red One. But Canon knows their lenses better than anyone, so have an advantaged position in really making it work well.
3. Don't cheap-out on the output options. Consider lightly compressed I-Frame only 10 bit 4:4:4 or RAW for video recording, or at the very least, allow uncompressed 4:4:4 video or packed RAW to be sent out the SDI of HDMI port. HDMI 1.3 supports some incredible data rates, so in some ways it's more versatile than SDI.

and last of all...

4. Keep the price of the system in the "prosumer" range.

That's it. The other details would work themselves out in the planning of the new system. But in my mind, the important thing is to keep it compatible with the EOS lenses to gain the economy of scale that provides. Perhaps they could also create a new line of "super premium" lenses that are above even the "L" series. They could be "super speeds" marked in T-Stops and have improved cinema style ergonomics., etc. But I think they should still have electronic focus features, and be provided in EOS mounts so still shooters could still use them if they like. (That would help keep the volume up so they are still commodity lenses, like the L series)